Growing up in a time when jetting off on holiday seemed something that only the very wealthiest part of the population could do meant two weeks every summer would be spent in Cornwall.

Some years, when we were blessed with good weather, this meant spending day after day at the beach, building epic sandcastles that were more akin to civil engineering projects, and body boarding in the white water with a T-shirt to make sure I didn’t get a rash, and a styrofoam board that would snap in half if you weren’t careful.

But when the weather was wet, which it was for at least a few days of our two-week holiday, I was instead forced to accompany my mum and stepfather on a shopping trip around the closest town, often St Austell.

During the late 1980s and early 1990s there was not, in truth, much to offer a young boy, barring the chance to gawp at the toys in any shop that sold them – which in those days included the likes of Woolworths – and the promise of a pasty and an ice cream for not complaining.

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Empty shops in Plymouth city centre back in 2009 after the recession hit (Image: Penny Cross)

Considering what was on offer I couldn’t complain and look back on it with fondness, especially the times when the grown-ups would push the boat out and take me to Dobwalls for the day so I could ride on the steam trains and tear around the adventure playgrounds.

Fast forward 30 years and I have two children of my own, both girls.

It’s fair to say that their experience of holidays is somewhat different. They have already been to Dubai twice, jetted to the Alps on a skiing holiday and met the real Father Christmas in Finnish Lapland. And they are not even eight years old.

Add in a handful of trips to France via the Plymouth to Roscoff ferry and even a stay at Disneyland Paris and you realise that their idea of a holiday is somewhat different to wading through the tidal pools at Trevone and getting a toy at Woolworths.

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Drake Circus is still going strong - but even the mall's owner has warned of reduced profits (Image: Penny Cross)

My own idea of a decent holiday has probably changed too, as our expectations of quality of life have gone up.

I doubt this narrative is unusual for people of my age, who are in the lucky position to be able to offer their children a quality of life they could not have envisaged when they were growing up in the 1980s and 1990s.

Though the budgets of families has taken a bit of a hit in recent years, our expectations have almost certainly not – which is one reason why our high streets are currently going through a paradigm shift.

Families have a higher expectation of what their free time can deliver, whether it is days out, shopping or eating. The notion of jetting off on a foreign holiday is hardly novel, even to locations as far flung as the Middle East.

So our high streets must lift their offering to match our expectations.

In Dubai you can gawp at a four-storey aquarium in the middle of one shopping mall, or, in another, go skiing down a slope that has real snow.